LOGAN : Fan Reviews/Reactions (Spoiler Alert)

[jo]

Maybe we should also set up another review/reaction thread, from fans!

There would be fans who would be seeing the movie at the Berlin premiere as well as those who have been the lucky winners of contests to join in the media panel interviews with Hugh in New York.

We can expect tweets/facebook entries/blogs detailing their impressions.


Jo

[jo]

The first reaction comes from Cait ( Supercaity)

Cait ‏@supercaity 19h
19 hours ago

That was the most damn beautiful movie I've ever seen. Ever. No hyperbole. It. Was. Perfect.
@sean_OConnell

[jo]

Maybe a little biased -- after all, they were at WAAPA together

http://instagram.com/p/BQbLY48FYXX

"More on the movie, which was intensely awesome..."

[jo]

Fans are very pleased! There was an early screening in LA...and some have come to IMDB to report their overall reactions. Ignore the first troll-ish post, although he took it back with his second post

www.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/board/nest/266086517

[jo]

raging_bull_27Just saw an advanced screening and I must say you killed it @thehughjackman!!! The perfect send off and ending to Logan! Thank you!

[jo]

IMDB has already disabled its Message Boards, but READERS REVIEWS continue to be published --

www.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

[jo]

I have just come from seeing LOGAN for the first time. I will not give my full comments yet because I need to cite a few important aspects from the movie and that would involve spoilers. Instead, I will say this --

*It is indeed a beautiful elegy! One that eventually meant peace for those who left us and hope for those who are left behind.

*I think the movie should have been open to young minds to view and absorb. Others may not agree -- but to me the violent instances were so fast-paced they did not leave me aghast nor did the regular swearing punctuations imply real malice. But the beautiful messages of this heartbreaking film should have been seen and appreciated by teenagers, too. Maybe R-13/15 ?

*I look forward to seeing it again because there are a few gaps that I would like to fill, both in terms of images and dialog. It is a movie that demands complete absorption. And for those critics that say it should have dropped the slow-going scenes -- hmmm....those are some of the more beautiful and heart-rending moments.

*It will help a lot if you are familiar with Wolverine's story, from the XMen movie franchise...and to some extent a knowledge of how his tale in the comics has been told. The references in the movie to things of the past had me nodding in recognition of the memories.


Why did I leave the movie with a feeling similar to the first time that I had seen THE FOUNTAIN? Not that the stories are at all similar...but to me there is a connection which gave both movies the same beautiful afterthought!


Go...and enjoy the movie!


Jo

[jo]

This review is from one of the fans who posted it on IMDB ( Yes, it was only the Message Board which was disabled!) and having seen the movie, this probably mirrors a lot of my thoughts on it --

A fine, fitting farewell to an iconic character, LOGAN is one of the best superhero movies ever made.

Author: shawneofthedead from shawneofthedead.wordpress.com/
1 March 2017

Let's cut to the chase, shall we? In every beat, every frame, every moment, LOGAN feels like the Wolverine movie Hugh Jackman has been waiting (and training) for 17 years to make. Set free of a PG rating, this wildly kinetic film has plenty of gore, action and violence pumping through its veins. But what makes this one of the finest superhero movies ever produced is the big, messy, somewhat broken heart beating at its core.

Set in a grim near-future where very few mutants remain alive, we meet an unthinkable incarnation of our favourite enclawed superhero: one who's decidedly past his prime. This is not the near-immortal Wolverine we remember, but Logan (Jackman): a broken, far older man who feels the weight of every wound inflicted upon him. His once- formidable body – tattooed with scars that aren't healing as fast or as well as they used to – seems to be failing. It's only his determination to keep the ailing, ageing Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart) safe and alive that never falters.

The film's plot kicks into overdrive when Logan's fate becomes entangled with that of Laura (Keen), a close-to-feral young girl who brandishes claws and fury as fierce and lethal as Logan's own. As the unlikely trio go on the run, we see echoes of Logan himself in Laura's terrifying rage and the tentative emotional connection she forges with Xavier. It's one of many smart moves on the part of James Mangold, who does double duty as director and co-writer. Bringing Laura into the picture allows him to explore Logan's trauma, regret and hope through the filter of this pint-sized powerhouse's origin story.

In effect, Mangold has placed an intimate family drama squarely at the heart of this ostensible blockbuster film – strip the characters of their superpowers and LOGAN would still pulse with plenty of heartbreak and humanity. Logan keeps dragging himself through the world when one suspects all he wants to do is die. Xavier grapples with his own frailty as his once-sharp mind deteriorates and betrays him, again and again. Laura is a tough, tender mess of contradictions: a victim of horrific abuse but also a warrior in the making. Watching them interact – fighting, screaming, arguing, glaring and, once in a while, forgiving – will elicit laughter and tears (lots of tears), in a way that no other superhero film to date has quire managed.

That doesn't mean, however, that LOGAN is an entirely joyless, sombre affair. Far from it. It proves, quite conclusively, that films in this genre can plumb the darkest of psychological depths while finding welcome ways to leaven the misery. (Note: this is something Zack Snyder would do well to learn as he continues to expand DC's largely mirthless cinematic universe.) Mangold threads moments of genuine humour into the proceedings – from casual shoplifting and runaway horses, to an ornery old man who refuses to take his pills.

The fast and furious action beats in LOGAN are also quite delightful to witness. The violence that's on full, bloody display is dark and horrible, but somehow fitting for this film in which there really are consequences for battles fought and lost. It's only when you see Logan's claws plunging into flesh, shearing cleanly through meat and bone, that you realise just how neutered and family-friendly his earlier outings were. There's a slow-motion sequence halfway through the film, as Logan struggles to get to an embattled Xavier, that's gritty and beautiful to watch – as thrilling as that scene-stealing Quicksilver moment in X-Men: Days Of Future Past. And it goes without saying that watching Laura gracefully spin and slice her way through oncoming attackers manages to be terribly wrong and wonderfully right at the same time.

To be quite frank, none of this would work without the incredible cast, all of them doing award-worthy work that will, sadly, be overlooked because their characters have such silly things as 'powers'. It's truly unsettling to watch Stewart dig beneath his natural gravitas to find the shaken core of a Professor X who's semi-consciously losing grip of his mind – the best and most dangerous mind in the universe. Keen is a revelation. Grabbing this breakout role by the throat and making it very much her own, she somehow manages to convey Laura's childish fragility and overpowering strength, often in the same breath.

And, finally, there's Jackman. He's been training for and playing the role that catapulted him to global stardom for 17 years now, and he brings everything he has to this final outing as Logan. He nails Logan's physical tics, of course: from his grizzled and aged demeanour, to his rattling cough and copious drinking. But Jackman also takes delight in unearthing the dark sadness at the heart of this once invincible, now vulnerable man. There is a hope and purity in Logan that doesn't always show through his wisecracks, but it shines brightly and unexpectedly here – often in the film's saddest moments.

There are a handful of things about the film don't work quite so well. The main antagonists, played by Richard E. Grant and Boyd Holbrook, are largely forgettable – there's not much that defines them outside their nefarious goals. As many viewers may be turned off by Logan's relentless misery and eye-popping violence as those who welcome it.

But this doesn't detract from the fact that LOGAN is a remarkable achievement. It manages to be several things at once: a bruising action film, a tender family drama and an intimate character study, liberally shaken through with comic-book sensibilities and a Western or two. If Jackman really is hanging up his claws for good, there could be no better way to bid farewell to one of Marvel's most enduring and appealing characters.

This was written not by media but probably by someone who cares a lot about the lore of the XMen and the tale of Wolverine! To appreciate the film fully, one must have gone the path of the storytelling of the XMen and the saga of LOGAN before now. These kinds of reviews are generally what is written from the heart!


Jo

[jo]

Did LOGAN shut the door from any further movie portrayals of WOLVERINE?

That is my appreciation of the message of finality in the movie.

What other stories are there to tell without referencing how his saga ends in this final tale?

The only gap I can see is when James Howlett was a teenager ...or when he was growing to be a fine strapping man ( both with a recast young Wolverine). In Origins, we see the story moving from his running away from his home...to the start of his early partnership with his brother Victor.

You can't put the young man Jimmy along with the young cast of the XMen franchise ( such as with the Apocalypse cast) -- he would be a century too old. You cannot recreate the old trilogy, where he mostly belongs because the old trilogy's cast would already be quite old.

The one meaningful possibility is telling the story or the time of what happened to Wolverine and Prof X that brought them to the sad state of affairs in LOGAN!

But can you really tell a story of THAT Wolverine with two other actors?? Sadly, it may not have the ring of truth ( fictional though it may be) to that storytelling without Hugh and Patrick portraying those characters!


A conundrum for FOX!


Jo

[jo]

When you see the movie -- check out if you can relate this photo to something which is not what you originally thought of it is supposed to be ( sorry, that was meant to be a puzzle of a question )

Are you sure that it is who we think he is ??





Jo

[hughmanity]

"Fan" Eddie the Eagle weighs in with well-wishes

[jo]

Another MARVEL-OUS review, from a Rotten Tomatoes Top Critic, with a lot of emphasis on Hugh's efforts in the success of the movie!

Movie Reviews
'Logan' Is The Best At What It Does — And What It Does Is Gritty
March 2, 20175:00 PM ET
Chris Klimek



Long live Logan, James Mangold's sad, stirring requiem for the X-Men franchise's most beloved character. The only problem with calling it the boldest and most affecting superhero flick in many years is that it's barely a superhero movie at all.

It doesn't talk like a superhero: too many F-bombs, including its very first word. And it doesn't walk like a superhero: No computer-generated cities are razed in its finale, no unseen thousands sacrificed. Though with its gnarly R-rated medley of stabbings, slicings, skewerings, and impalings in what has been, Deadpool excepted, a PG-13 franchise, Logan sure feels bloodier than most of its ilk. And feels is the right verb: The deaths have weight. For once. To misquote the 40-year-old tagline of the very first big-budget comic book movie, you will believe a man can cry ...
... at a movie about a 200-year-old rage monster with a silly haircut and retractable knives implanted in his knuckles.

Because Logan is unlike any capes-and-tights movie we've seen. It does for the creaky X series what Creed did for the Rocky cycle, restoring the integrity and emotion of the earliest installments while introducing talented new blood. (As with Creed, you need only skeletal familiarity with the prior chapters to get gut-punched by this one.)


Most significantly, it's Hugh Jackman's swan song to the part that'll be cited in the first graf of his obituary, one he's played for 17 years — longer than any superhero has ever remained on duty, by a lot. He's played Logan more times than Sly played Rocky. More times than Connery or Moore played 007. More times than Shatner played Kirk — in movies, anyway. (And all sans hairpiece, despite the precariousness of his rapid-healing mutant coif!)


Unlike almost every other star who ever got famous in a heavily-merchandised role, Jackman never whined about his golden-goose gig. He was a musical theater guy, used to working hard, and he knew he'd lucked into an opportunity most actors would stab you through the heart with adamantium claws for. (In fact, he was a last-minute replacement Wolverine, after Scotsman Dougray Scott had to drop out of 2000's X-Men.) Jackman always seemed humble and happy.


Which is ironic, because the character has historically been defined by his temper. But it's rage of the largely impotent sort in Logan, which plays like the King Lear of the X-saga. Director Mangold gave us not only 2013's not-bad The Wolverine, but also Walk the Line, and 3:10 to Yuma. You can pick up echoes of all those movies here, and of Unforgiven, samurai pictures, the Coen Brothers, Children of Men, even Samuel Beckett. The scenes between Jackman and Patrick Stewart, who's been in these movies as long as he has, have an intimacy rarely found in films with nine-digit budgets.


One influence that's muted: the 40-odd years of Marvel comics in which the character has appeared. Even though, in a confident grace note, the movie actually lets Jackman leaf through old X-Men issues, dismissing them as "ice cream for bed wetters!" because that's not how it all went down. Feel free to infer a diss of any X-movies that didn't deserve him. There have been a few.


But at last we have a Wolverine movie as committed as Jackman is, and the grinning Australian wrings every drop of pathos he can from it. He's tremendous. Logan finds the short-tempered, steel-skulled, bicentennial beast-man finally feeling his age. It's an effort for his body to expel bullets now. He's hacking up blood like a courtesan in an opera. In one sure sign that the instant "healing factor" that once made him unkillable is flagging, he can even get drunk — and he does his damnedest to stay that way.


You need only scope out its sun-bleached El Paso-to-Oklahoma City-to-North Dakota trail to see that Logan belongs to a genre even older and more tradition-bound than superheroes: In every way that matters, it's a Western. Mangold leans into that association, hard, by having its three principal characters take a breather from the action in Act Two to watch the George Stevens classic Shane. If you know that movie, you'll get a pretty good clue about where this one is going.


Subtle? No. Powerful? Just you wait, Bub.


Set in 2029 (where The Terminator began, back when 2029 was a long way off), Logan exists in a twilight world where the X-Men are a spent and dissipated force. No new mutants have appeared in a generation. Charles Xavier, who founded the team some 70 years earlier, is in his nineties and suffering from dementia. Mangold (who wrote the script with Scott Frank and Michael Green, drawing inspiration from two 21st century comics stories by Mark Millar and Kyle Craig) vividly imagines what this scenario might look like if the patient were the world's most powerful psychic. Basically, a Professor X not in control of his faculties is a loose nuke. Logan and Caliban (the comedian Stephen Merchant, playing a bad-mutant-turned-good) keep the prof sedated and isolated in a compound south of the border, hoping he won't take us all with him when he finally goes.


Logan, scraping together a living as a limo driver, reluctantly accepts a dying woman's request to escort a mysterious little girl (the astonishing Dafne Keen) from Mexico, up through the spine of the United States, to Canada. The Federales and a bunch of extras from The Road Warrior show up at his door (along with Boyd Holbrook from Narcos and Richard E. Grant from the immortal Hudson Hawk) and the movie becomes, like The Empire Strikes Back, one long, desperate chase — and with just as many surprises.


Though it runs 45 minutes longer than Bryan Singer's franchise-launching X-Men, it shares with that film a refreshing modesty of scale. X-Men was built largely on Jackman's protective relationship with Anna Paquin, as Logan trades on his burgeoning rapport with Keen. The world isn't threatened — just a handful of characters about whom we've come to care deeply.


Marvel's "mutants," separate from their other superpowered beings, have always been analogs for persecuted peoples; in this movie, they're immigrants. This gives Logan the kind of topical frisson and intensity that The Dark Knight had nine years ago, and no superhero movie has enjoyed since. Inevitably, there will be those who cry that we don't need dour, violent R-rated comic book adaptations; that crowd can take comfort in the certainty that the bright, quippy Marvel Studios films aren't going out of print until the human race does.
Logan is something else, a stripped-down, one-mic, late-period Johnny Cash-style supermovie. And it's a Marvel.

[jo]

It's been great to read the overwhelming number of positive critical reviews --

but it's fan reactions which can get to the emotions! Hope Hugh reads all his social media messages even if only for this time!


Messages like this express much more than what the critical praise on RT can accomplish --

Federico Sfascia‏ @federicosfascia 9m
9 minutes ago


@realhughjackman sleep well samurai, it's been a great journey.

#Logan #OneLastTime #Wolverine #HughJackman

[jo]

And they can be funny, too

Jefferson‏ @minoroversight 3m
3 minutes ago

Who doesn't love @realhughjackman? It's unAmerican n unAustrailan at the same time. #Logan 7:30... I'm bringing tissues cause I have a cold

[jo]

If you haven't seen the movie and has an IMAX screening available near you -- I strongly suggest seeing it in that format! I have been it on both the regular and the IMAX screen formats -- and I could not believe how much more I appreciated the movie seeing it on IMAX!

Jo

[jo]

Part of a long feedback ( close to 400 responses) to an IGN feature on LOGAN --

AbrasiveCP3
Mar 6 2017 2AM


This was the first film that ever made me cry... I still remember seeing the first X-Men in theaters when I was a kid. That movie kickstarted the modern superhero film genre. For our generation, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is the iconic character that grew with us. I can't think of any others that have consistently been around for 17 years. Fortunately, Hugh Jackman ended his run in the perfect way! Logan is an absolute masterpiece. Mangold and Jackman decided to break genre conventions in order to craft an emotional Western with brutal action and superb character development. Logan's death was perfectly executed. It was so fitting that he died in the Canadian woods by ending the persecution that the X-Men always fought. Logan was killed by a clone that embodied the rage that he spent lifetimes struggling with. The harmonica that plays during the scene was perfect. His final words to Laura were touching and meaningful. He finally found peace, and he finally became a father. Thank you, Hugh Jackman.

[jo]

And Hugh Jackman says THANK YOU, too!

http://instagram.com/p/BRREc1CDTGy

[jo]

As of now, 376 full reviews have been written by IMDB users --

www.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/

Please scroll down if you would like to sample a few!



Jo

[jo]

Awfully cute

[jo]

/photo/1



screenrant.com/hugh-jackman-wolverine-logan-fan-art-tribute/

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/BRwxIFujCXu

[jo]

Love "kaya" ( aka coconut jam)!

It's easy to make but you need very fresh coconut ( not young coconut) and it's best made with the first- squeezed liquid ( coconut milk, which is different from coconut juice found in young coconuts) from fresh coconut meat that has been ground to a very fine degree ( do not put in any water), mixed with brown sugar until it thickens ( like the consistency of peanut butter) and the oil separates. Haha -- sounds complicated -- but it is not

Jo

[jo]

Fans express their love in so many ways!

[jo]

[jo]

Craig Ferguson‏
Verified account
 @craigyferg 28m

Just saw #Logan. Bit of a masterpiece. MutoTragedy is my new favorite genre. Fair play to you @realhughjackman. Bloody and brilliant!




Crazy Deftone‏ 
@crazydeftone

@craigyferg @realhughjackman I've never been in a theatre where every man was crying in sync. It certainly was amazing.

So, Hugh Jackman's best two film masterpieces draw the same reaction to the finales!

I teared up for both Les Miserables and LOGAN!


Jo